When I see people leave their cars running as they head into the supermarket with children in tow, I want to scream, “You ignorant, wasteful bastards! Don’t you know what you’re doing to your kids?” Me, I can’t help being aware that every gallon of gasoline that runs through my car pumps out 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. Ack!

So, as a record-seeking drought wilted crops and cracked the earth under my feet, I vowed to change. When Sandy hit the Jersey Shore, my resolve redoubled. “World,” I announced on Facebook, “I’m done with driving!”

How’d that work out?

Lord knows I’ve tried to give up my car, but I’m like a chicken-skin addict with a big stash of China White sittin’ right there in my driveway. Every day, it seems, there’s another excuse — er, compelling reason — for me not to hop on my bike and ride to work.

One challenge is that at 56 I’m not as boundlessly energetic as I used to be. Another is that as the chief executive of a nonprofit, I can’t show up at meetings with state regulators all sweaty and grease-stained. It’s just not done.

You should quit your job to save the planet. But, he bought a bike!!!!

It really is that simple. If only the rest of life were. No sooner did I publicly issue my pledge to give up the car than a hundred reasons to keep it sprang up like drought-resistant weeds. Here’s one: date night. Somehow, I overlooked the fact that if my wife and I are going to go out on a Saturday night, I’m either going to need a tandem bike or I’ll to have to hold fast to the old jalopy. Somehow, I don’t see my dear one hopping onto the second seat in all her finery and pedaling off with me to the opera.

And, so he rides the bike now and then, but, 21st century life intrudes. And with every fossil fueled trip, he kills a polar bear.

Why not buy an all electric vehicle? Oh, right, they’re really expensive, tend to be tiny, and do not go very far. I posted the same thing in the comments at HuffPo. Kinda doubting it gets published.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

7 Comments

What a moron. I’m without a car (thanks to the lousy economy and how expensive CA makes it to own one), and it sucks. You have no mobility, no independence — try going anywhere at night. And public transportation? Puh-leeze. I’m convinced those oh-so-pious advocates of public transportation never rode a bus a day in their lives. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so chirpy about it, having dealt with the homeless and the mental cases, and being packed like sardines.

If I met this loon, I wouldn’t know whether to laugh at him or smack him for being a fool.

Comment by John

2012-11-28 17:54:36

Phones you moocher get a job! Coldists always attack the messenger not the message. Teach originally thought Sandy was over hyped because that was what he wanted to believe. He did not want the war mists to be correct. He was as wrong on climate change as he was on predicting the election winner.He prefers faith over science

Comment by Gumball_Brains

2012-11-28 19:33:30

Hey, you silly racist antisemitic troll, try laying off the free medical marijuana for a few hours. It’s really screwing up your mental faculties. For what they were to begin with anyway.

Problem with this guy, as with all liberals. They never want to give up the life that they want others to give up. They say, that we should give up cars, but then they utterly are incapable of realizing what that means.

It’s like, making a pledge to give up electricity but still insisting that you can live in the city and in the same manner that you’ve been living.

He could have given up his car if he really wanted to. If he changed his job so that he could easily walk to work. Forced his wife to give up her “glamor” life so that walking to their date-site would not mean messing up her dress that is worth 50 meals to other people.

When gas prices spiked a few years ago, I had to give up my truck and my cycle. I even had to move closer to where the jobs are and bought a high-mileage little itty bitty car. I HATE CARS!!!

but then, like this idiot troll here proves, reality and logic play no role in the existence of liberals.

Comment by Trish

2012-11-29 08:37:32

Our friend John the Troll has a screw loose, or as GB says- has been smoking the medical marijuana his sister gets him. We mustn’t make fun of the little guy, we’re clearly the cooler heads and we have the facts on our side. So let our little Gollum rant on, it’s all he’s got.

Meanwhile, reality does suck for liberals. Imagine if the entire country were to move closer to their jobs, use public transportation more frequently, and soon stop driving cars altogether. Picture the little towns and businesses along the way that would suffer from all that. Picture more auto workers, gas station attendants, mechanics, gas and oil workers etc out of jobs. Imagine what THAT would do to an already struggling economy, just so we can save a few emissions.
Picture Russia circa 1950. Not a pretty sight. And if these folks (progressives, Democrat Socialists and AGWers) have their way, we will be experiencing life similar to it, right here.
The thought gives me the willies, and it scares the h out of me that it brings them practically sexual Nirvana.

Change Font Size

Pages

Live Traffic

The Code

All posts here are my views. None represent my employer. If ye can prove me wrong, so be it. Ye can rant and rave at me, but be mostly polite to any other commentors. I will put up with quite a bit, but be mostly respectful to others.

NOTICE In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., section 107, some material on this web site is provided without permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed further, except for "fair use" non-profit educational purposes, without permission of the copyright owner.Pirate's Cove by William Teach is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Search for:

The Author

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
In politics the middle way is none at all.